The Media About Turn

Even before Mirko Marjanovic, the mandator of the new Serbian Government announced the names of the ministerial candidates, it was common knowledge that the list would not contain the name of Serbia's former Information Minister Milivoje Pavlovic. Pavlovic has held this post under two governments (with Radoman Bozovic and Nikola Sainovic). He spent his two terms in office denying media lies about Serbia and told Serbs that the truth about them had finally started "to leak out." In the end he left the impression of being rather apathetic and tired.

Pavlovic does not have much luck lately. At the end of his term in office, he underwrote, in the name of the Serbian Ministry of Information, a book "The Dictionary of Delusions" which, as was said at its promotion recently, "summed up the three-year-long battle in unmasking the very skillful and bellicose demonization of Serbia and the Serbian people." It seemed that the book would crown Pavlovic's career. Unfortunately it came into the hands of Mirjana Markovic, a sociologist and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's wife, turning the end of Pavlovic's career into a nightmare. After reading the book Ms Markovic said that she feared that the Ministry of Information would not succeed in changing the ugly image of Serbia, but enhance it. Ms Markovic concluded that Serbia and the Serbian people were in dire need of responsible writing, and that in future, those who embarked upon the task should know and respect facts and have national and personal dignity.

Another unpleasant surprise awaited Pavlovic last week. In his speech, Marjanovic insisted on radical changes in the field of information, condemning the ruling concept as totally wrong. In this way Serbian politics have jettisoned what was, until only yesterday, considered to be a great achievement and virtue - the fact that we faced the world all alone. "The dissemination of information is responsible for the awareness that practically the whole world is against Serbs, and that for this reason, we don't need anyone. This belief is unfounded. It is not true that everybody is against the Serbs, just as it isn't true that Serbs can live on their own, like economic, political and cultural Robinson Crusoes, at least not if they wish to be successful and happy."

For analysts of political events in Serbia, Marjanovic's few words on information, were the only surprise in his speech. The fact that the whole world does not hate us and that we cannot live like pariahs, has been said many times before by the opposition. If memory holds, former Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic was the last person to use this thesis, with the idea of remaining in power temporarily. However, he was chased out of Serbian politics precisely because of such stands, and dubbed a "traitor" and "mercenary."

In the last few years, the authorities have not been able to abandon a favorite thesis - that of a planetary conspiracy against Serbs, i.e. that all that is happening in the Balkans (from wars to strikes in the municipal transport company) are the result of a Communist-Vatican-German-Islamic conspiracy. Another cherished belief held by the Serbian 'Ministry of Truth' is their fatalistic belief that the "truth about Serbs," and their just struggle, the virtuous characteristics of the Belgrade and Pale (Bosnian Serb political center) authorities would win sooner or later, because "the truth is on our side." And, once "the truth spreads", everything will improve of its own accord. The day will come when the malicious world media will apologize for having banished Serbs and their leaders to the farthermost corners of Hell.

While waiting for the truth to win, all attention was centered on the domestic public which it was necessary to convince of the justification of war goals. The state media, spearheaded by television, were turned into the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) ideological headquarters.

That everything to do with this war was cooked up in the sphere of information, has been said many times before. It seems worthwhile to return to this, in order that it might not be forgotten that the media here played the role of avant-garde chauvinist units and were the instigators of ethnic clashes, so that returning to the narrow and straight road will be a very difficult and painful process. "It is true that the media enabled, started and brutalized the war in the former Yugoslavia. They dehumanized opponents, calling them names which made it difficult to think of them as human beings. That was a preparation for the brutalities: war is all the more brutal when you realize that the beings on the other side are less human. They don't even have a nationality, but are called 'Ustashi', 'fundamentalists', 'Serbo-Communists', i.e., 'Serbo-Chetniks'", said Vojin Dimitrijevic, a Law School professor.

Before all the members of a nation are turned by the media into sub-humans, such characteristics are only ascribed to their leaders. While things still didn't look all that dangerous, Zadar-based sociologist Ivica Mastruko warned that it was a bad thing that the other side's leaders were being "represented as having wolf heads." At the time, as far as the media in Zagreb were concerned, Slobodan Milosevic was a "Stalinist and bolshevist", "dictator", "Stalin's illegitimate son" and "Saddam Hussein's double". The Belgrade media described Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as a "fascist", "Ustasha", "genocidal man", "Hitler's heir". At the time, Belgrade actor Ljuba Tadic refused to believe that it was too late, and that a recovery was not possible. "I dream that the day will dawn for Croats and Serbs, when the people will go out into the streets, see empty kiosks, no newspapers... And I am sure that even the sickest will then be able to get better again..." But, recovery would need a lot more than just empty newspaper stands. It was necessary to decontaminate both Belgrade and Zagreb, which were pouring out hatred. The screens were turned into embrasures, and victims throughout Yugoslavia were first killed verbally and then riddled with bullets.

The propaganda models followed by HTV and RTS later buried thousands of innocent people. The authorities awarded their TV minions for a well done job. By chance, Zagreb and Belgrade heard identical assessments on the work of Croatian television (HTV) and Serbian television (RTS) on the very same day (May 27, 1993). At a HTV council session, Andrija Hebrang, a top ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) official said that HTV had "played a historical role in the creation of the Croatian state." On the same day, at a session of the Council for Information in Serbia, it was said that "RTS had integrated the information space of the Serbian people and contributed convincingly to the breakthrough of the truth about Serbia in the world."

From the beginning of the war in Bosnia, and especially after the introduction of sanctions, RTS started forgetting the "Ustashi" and "fascists", and turned to the "mujahedin". This period is characterized by a new propaganda approach. It implied opposition to "the genocidal new world order", and taking a stand against the demonization of Serbs in the world media. Every evening the news hour on television offered proof of a conspiracy against Serbs. Journalists vied with each other over who would bring supplements on Serbia's friends who were just about to break through the blockade. Asked by a journalist how the other (foreign media) managed to manipulate their public with regard to the war in Yugoslavia, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic said curtly: "By blackmail, bribery and misinformation."

In the later phases of "spreading the truth", after former Information Minister Pavlovic became sure that the "balloon of lies had been punctured and the truth had started to leak out", RTS programs started bringing patriotically-minded soothsayers to the studios, and so acquainted us with spells and other means used in the battle against the "Conspiracy", thus only confusing the people even further. All in all, the TV program during Dusan Mitevic's term in office as RTS general director (because of whom Belgraders took to the streets on March 9, 1991), looks like a model of professional and "journalistic honesty" compared to what the present RTS general director Milorad Vucelic has to offer us today.

Even if we were to believe in the honest intentions of the new Government to turn over a new leaf in the field of information, it is hard to believe that anyone will be capable of stopping or re-directing an enormous propaganda machine which has been turned in the wrong direction for years. All the more so, as the announced comeback into the world will be carried out by those very same people who made their careers by persuading the people that the whole world hates us. This machine has long stopped being a mirror of the authorities' activities, and has come to embody them. Without tv interpretations, justifications and the glossing over of moves and results in current Serbian politics - the authorities would find it difficult to remain in power.